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  • Ottawa takes baby steps while BC backtracks on child care

    “I have tried 5 different babysitters. I wish I could send my child back to the daycare centre; he loved it there – but when we lost the subsidy we had to leave. We can barely pay our rent and buy food.” It may come as a surprise to hear…

  • When Most Votes Don’t Count

    Lack of democracy is at the root of Canada’s worst problems The Senate scandal that has obsessed the media in recent months is the least of the political problems that beset this country. The Senate is no less dysfunctional than the House of Commons has become. We live in a…

  • Little change in Nova Scotia’s child poverty rate since pledge to eliminate

    Halifax—In 2011, there were still 29,000 children living in poverty in Nova Scotia, twenty-two years after the House of Commons pledged to eliminate poverty for children in Canada by the year 2000. This represents 17.3% of all children and is the fifth highest rate in Canada. Indeed, the province has…

  • Poorly designed third party advertising rules chilled election debate, reduced voter access to information: Study

    (Vancouver) A new study finds that BC’s third party advertising rules caused extensive problems for “small spenders” such as non-profits and charities during the 2009 provincial election. The rules – brought in through the controversial Bill 42 in 2008 – led to widespread confusion, wasted resources, anxiety and self-censorship among…

  • Planting perennials: In memory of Kate

    Artwork by Karlene Harvey Kate McInturff came to work with us as a result of a very CCPA mashup of serendipity, optimism, and a leap of faith. But rarely have those ingredients produced such a fantastic result. The stage was set in the midst of a meeting of the Alternative…

  • What’s the Canada-EU trade deal all about?

    Chances are, you’ve heard about the Canada-EU trade deal. It’s hard to miss, what with the federal government hard at work staging photo-ops and events across the country, promoting the deal as a major win. The official sales pitch focuses on the trade aspects of the deal – lowering or…

  • Imagining A Moral Economy

    Transition to carbon-free economy requires moral leadership “If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage.” —From the mission statement of the Fossil Free movement. Rarely are we invited to consider ethical questions of right and wrong in matters of economic development, particularly…

  • LNG is incompatible with BC’s climate obligations

    Now that we are in a sunny lull between the end of flooding season and the start of fire season, it’s time we had a talk about fossil fuels and climate change in BC. The BC government deserves praise for standing up to Alberta and the federal government over the…

  • “National Broadband Task Force secretive, tilted against public interest concerns”

    Say authors of new communications book OTTAWA–“Calls for more openness and public input into communications policy in Canada are falling on deaf ears,” say Marita Moll and Leslie Regan Shade, editors of E-commerce vs. E-commons; Communications in the Public Interest, a book, released today, on communications policy in the new…

  • Employment supports and labour market participation: 20th Anniversary retrospective

    From 2001 to 2003, BC’s new Liberal government instituted significant policy reforms in the delivery and governance of public services. In 2004, Simon Fraser University and the CCPA-BC secured a five-year Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Community-University Research Alliances (CURA) grant to research how those reforms…

  • Putting the public interest first (Part 2)

    Corporations can and should be made socially responsible Read Part 1 What benefits could a government expect by amending corporate charters to include the public interest? Because of the wide spectrum of corporate activity, some of it benign to the public interest by nature, many corporations could already operate easily…

  • Labour Matters

    Work Life: Mayor playing with fire

    Throughout 2018 there has been intense media scrutiny directed at Alex Forrest, the President of the United Firefighters of Winnipeg (UFFW).While this story continues to unfold, we do know its most important facts. We know that in collective bargaining in 2014, the Firefighters and the City agreed to an arrangement…